NOTES ON THE HISTORY OF THE R.C.P.[1]

Written:Written on December 1, 1921Published:First published in 1924 in the journalBolshevikNo. 7–8.

      Printed from the original.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1971,

      Moscow,Volume 36,

      pages552-554.Translated:Andrew RothsteinTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive.You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

NOTE TO N. I. BUKHARIN

ComradeBukharin,

Ienclose my notes in connection with the theme assigned
to you by the Central Committee today. I have been
thinking about this theme, and planned:

(α)settingout thesubjectsof dispute, difference and
split;

(β)alternationof periods of split and periods of unity;

(γ)alternationof periods of a majority for the
Mensheviks and for the Bolsheviks (maybe it could be represented
in a diagram?).

Dropme a line about your opinion.

Shouldnot this be taken as acanvasfor your article?
Or something of this kind?

LIST (CHRONOLOGICAL) OF SUBJECTS OF DISPUTE

1903.Oct.The question of organisation: § 1 of the Rules.

1904. “TheZemstvo campaign.”

1905.May.Attitude to the revolution, to the strike
struggle, to the armed uprising.

1905.Aug.Boycott of the Duma, or participation?

1905.Dec.Insurrection.

1906.Jan.–Mar.Boycott of the Duma, or participation?

1906.April–May.Attitude to the First Duma.

1906.July.Attitude to the armed uprising.

”Sept.” ” the underground struggle.

1907.Jan.–Feb.Elections to the Second Duma: Left
Bloc, or with the Cadets?

1907.April.Second Duma.

1909–10.Liquidationism.

1911.Plenumof the Central Committee.Unity or split?

1912.Thesplit (liquidationism).

1913. “Strikefever”, etc.

1913.Attitudeto the Third
Duma.[2]

1914.Attitudeto the imperialist war.

1917.Feb.–Mar.Attitude to the February revolution.

1917.May.The Coalition Ministry.

1917.July.The First Congress of
Soviets.[3]

1917.Sept.The Kornilov revolt and the Democratic
Conference.

1917.Oct.Soviet power;terror;Brest Peace Treaty;conspiracies and civil war.

1918.Civilwar. Attitude of the Mensheviks.

1919. ” ” ” ” ” ”

STRUGGLE OF BOLSHEVIKS AND MENSHEVIKS:
	      (ALTERNATION OF NUMERICAL RELATIONS)

1903.TheCongress20

 ———

24

44 votes[4](one party).

1905.Twocongresses.Za(Zirka=approximately) (two
parties).[5]

1906.StockholmCongress. Exactly (number of votes)oneparty.

1907.LondonCongress. Exactly (number of
votes)[6]one
party.

(Groupsin the Dumas.)

1911–12.Collectionsby workers(from the miscellany on
liquidationism)[7](one and two parties).

1917.June.First All-Russia Congress of Soviets.

1917Nov.{{

1.5(?) millions.
9 millions.[8]Elections to the Constituent
Assembly.

1.5millions_ _ _

9 millions

[1]Writtenin connection with the discussion of the tactics of a
united working-class front. Initially the question was discussed by
the Party’s Central Committee on December 1, 1921, which
approved the line of joint action with workers in the Second, the
Two-and-a-Half and the Amsterdam Internationals. It was dealt
within a special (19th) paragraph of the theses “On the United
Working-Class Front and the Attitude to Workers in the Second,
the Two-and-a-Half, and the Amsterdam Internationals, and also
to Workers Supporting Anarcho-Syndicalist Organisations”. =

The
theses were adopted by the Executive Committee of the
Comintern, and the Eleventh All-Russia Conference of the R.C.P.(B.)
(December 19–22, 1921) acceded to them. A more detailed
discussion of the theses was held by the first enlarged Plenary Meeting
of the Comintern Executive Committee (February 21–March 4),
which adopted them. They were endorsed by the Fourth Congress
of the Comintern.

Forthe above-mentioned Paragraph 19, seeKPSS v
resolyutsiyakh..., Part One, 1954, pp. 585–86.

[2]Thereference is evidently to the Fourth Duma.

[3]FirstAll-Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’
Deputieswas held from June 3 to 24 (June 16 to July 7), 1917.

[4]Thenumerical proportion of the votes of the Bolsheviks and the
Mensheviks at the Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P., where 20 
Bolshevik delegates had 24 votes, and the Mensheviks—following
the withdrawal of 2Rabocheye Dyelodelegates and 5 Bundists,
who supported them—20 votes, a total of 44.

[5]Areference to the Bolshevik Third Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.
held in London in April and May 1905, and the parallel conference
of Mensheviks in Geneva.

[6]Areference to the distribution of votes at the Fourth (Stockholm,
“Unity”) Congress and the Fifth (London) Congress of the Party,
that is, the period when the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks were
formally members of the same party, with a single Central
Committee and regular conferences, etc.

Ofthe 112 delegates with vote at the Fourth Congress, the
Bolsheviks had 46, the Mensheviks, 62, and the rest belonged to
non-factional Social-Democrats. The Mensheviks had a small edge
and so the Congress adopted Menshevik resolutions on some
questions. In his Appeal to the Party on the question of this Congress
Lenin wrote:

“Wemust and shall fight ideologically against those decisions
of the Congress which we regard as erroneous. But at the same
time we declare to the whole Party that we are opposed to a split
of any kind. We stand for submission to the decisions of the
Congress....

“Wecall upon all our fellow-thinkers to accept such submission
and such ideological struggle.” (See present edition, Vol. 10,
p. 314). However, the Congress decision on Party unity remained
on paper, for the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks kept to their
respective views and retained their separate organisations.

Ofthe 336 delegates with vote at the Fifth Congress, the
Bolsheviks had 105, the Mensheviks 97, the Bundists 57, the Polish
Social-Democrats 44, the Lettish Social-Democrats 29, and “
non-Party” delegates 4. The Bolsheviks had the Poles and the
Latvians with them, and so commanded a stable majority. On all
questions of principle the Congress passed Bolshevik resolutions.
The Congress elected a Central Committee consisting of five
Bolsheviks, 4 Mensheviks, 2 Polish and 1 Lettish Social-Democrats.
Candidate members included 10 Bolsheviks, 7 Mensheviks, 3
Poles and 2 Latvians.

TheCongress marked a major victory for Bolshevism over the
Party’s opportunist wing, the Mensheviks. For details on the
Fifth Congress, see Lenin’s article “The Attitude towards
Bourgeois Parties”, present edition, Vol. 12, pp. 489–509.

[7]ThemiscellanyMarxism and Liquidationism, published in 1914,
gave figures on the workers’ collections for various purposes by
supporters of the Bolsheviks and of the liquidators. These figures
proved that the majority of workers rallied round the Bolsheviks.
Collections in aid of strikers at various factories and in various
industries, for persons who had been victimised, and for various
other needs of the working-class movement, carried through the
Duma groups of the Bolsheviks and the liquidators, reached the
following figures for the period from October 1913 to June 6,
1914 (according to reports in Bolshevik and liquidators’ papers):
through the Bolshevik group, 12,891.24 rubles (number of

__PRINTERS_P_707_COMMENT__
45*workers’ groups, 1,295); through the liquidators’ group, 6,114.87
rubles (number of workers’ groups, 215); the Bolsheviks received
only 6 per cent from non-workers, and the liquidators, 46 per 
cent. The number of group collections by workers for the
working-class press was distributed as follows (by May 1914): for the
Bolshevik papers (PravdaandRabochy Put) roughly 6,000 and for
the liquidators’ newspaper (Luch) a total of 1,500 (see present
edition, Vol. 20, pp. 381–87).

[8]Areference to the proportion of votes polled by the Mensheviks
and the Bolsheviks during the election to the Constituent Assembly
in November 1917. For details, see Lenin’s article “The
Constituent Assembly Elections and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat”
(present edition, Vol. 30, p. 254).